Missouri woman accused of repeatedly poisoning son, 9

CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri woman was jailed Friday after being accused of repeatedly poisoning her 9-year-old son for about a year.

St. Louis County prosecutors charged 35-year-old Rachel Kinsella, of the north-central Missouri town of Meadville, on Tuesday with endangering the welfare of a child. A judge on Friday set Kinsella's bond at $50,000 and ordered her to have no contact with her son until further notice by the court.

Gregory Smith, a St. Louis attorney representing Kinsella, said his client maintains her innocence and the criminal case has added another hurdle in her fight to regain custody of her son.

"She is very distressed about this because she has been accused of intentionally poisoning her child," Smith said in a telephone interview on Friday. "She adamantly denies everything. She loves Patrick and wants to get him back."

St. Louis County police investigator Kenneth Skala wrote in a probable-cause statement attached to the criminal complaint that the alleged poisoning took place between March of last year and February of this year.

The investigation was launched after doctors at St. Louis' Children's Hospital determined that the boy's symptoms were related to medications he should not have received, Skala wrote.

Skala alleged that investigators found Kinsella, the child's only caretaker, "surreptitiously" was having her son treated at two hospitals, getting unspecified prescriptions at both. Kinsella told police she "accidentally" gave her son the wrong medication on "an occasion," although medical experts say the type and amount of drugs found in the boy's system showed intentional poisoning, Skala wrote.

Ed Magee, a spokesman for St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch, declined to say Friday what specifically Kinsella is suspected of having given her son to make him ill, telling The Associated Press the criminal complaint and the related probable-cause statement would have to speak for itself.